Cranberry Harvest ’09

I have worked here in Cranberry Country for 10 years and this is the first year I’ve actually gotten to photograph a cranberry harvest in progress. It didn’t happen by accident, either. My co-worker, Donna, gave me a heads up so on the way home from work yesterday Dale and I took the scenic route. We were not disappointed.

These bogs are wet harvested, which basically means that they flood the bog with water.

Use these machines to free the cranberries from the vines.

And then gather up the cranberries with these floating rubber thingies.

Those are technical cranberry harvest terms, in case you were wondering.

Okay, I may not know much about how it actually works but I do know that it makes for excellent photo opportunities. And I also know that cranberries that are wet harvested are used for juice and sauce.

Do you know what that means? It means that you’ll think about this post the next time you buy a bottle of cranberry juice!

Very interesting, and with such nice photos. Just last weekend the “When do the cranberries come?” discussion began. I think I read that those ‘plastic things’ are called ‘booms’. Whatever. Now, I’m going to have to add cranberry juice to the grocery list.

I was having my morning craisins as I read you post! But they’re “dried” so they must not have been wet-harvested – right? Hmmmm…. or maybe along the lines of the white cranberries being underripe red ones, the dried ones are just very old?…

I spent my summers in Wareham Carole and this was a part of every fall. Thanks for the memories…you should see the snakes in those bogs! 🙂 We would pick weeds for $2.00 and hour and then go to Lincoln Park for our big summer day out…Woo Hoo!

Fall has definitely come to New England! Cranberries that you buy in a bag are ‘dry-harvested’ … which means that they are picked by hand. Back-breaking work, to be sure. I’ve seen both kinds of harvests, and both are fascinating 🙂 If anyone has time, Ocean Spray has quite the visitor center, definitely worth the visit.